Using interviews for writing

One of the writing assignments I had to complete recently for my Master of Arts in Creative Writing course involved doing an interview. I then had to write an article suitable for a magazine, giving it a creative angle to show the personality of the person being interviewed. All that in only 500 words.

I don’t enjoy being that restricted but I rose to the challenge. I had to be very ruthless with my word count, cutting back to the bare bones of the story. On this occasion it was my lecturer imposing the restrictions and I would have been marked down if I’d gone over the word count. Editors of magazines are just as demanding. Often they only have space for 150 or 200 words, or less. If you don’t cut the extra words, they will. Then you might find important facts missing from the final article.

Anyway, I was reasonably pleased with the end result. I managed to keep within the word count too. The lecturer gave me a distinction, so she was pleased with it as well.